Siteground Review 2018

Siteground Hosting has a philosophy that handcrafted is not a one size fits all approach. Nor is a one size fits all approach a solution. The team doesn’t believe in offering a standardized service or massively used server management software. Instead, their solutions and systems are created in-house by the very same people that use them. And in turn they’ve amassed some of the best reviews of any hosting provider out there.

So what does this mean for you?

You will get unique and revolutionary technologies which will benefit you in terms of server security, uptime, and speed. It is this hands-on approach that ensures they are always improving, whether it’s themselves or their offerings, and it shows.

Founded in 2004 Siteground Hosting is one of those success stories where a group of students got together in and started a company that could host people’s websites. Fast forward to 2017 and you have an incredibly successful company with a team of over 320 staff with offices in Bulgaria, Spain, UK and the USA.

In a relatively small space of time, they have become one of the most popular and highest ranked hosting providers in a very competitive industry. Their success can be attributed to the best 24 hours, 7 days a week support in the business, their unique in-house WordPress speed and security solutions as well as their various hosting plans. Accredited as an official WordPress hosting provider, Siteground is one of the very few companies that offers location specific hosting with data centers in Europe, USA, and Singapore.

So are all these accolades deserved? We think so. Trusted by over 500 000 domains we would say a whole lot of other people agree with us too.

While other web hosting providers’ packages are far more rigid and it can feel as though you don’t necessarily get the most value for your money Siteground’s solutions are far more tailored to each customer’s specific needs and they have something more valuable that can’t be measured, which is integrity. While all web hosting companies promise round-the-clock support, 99.9% uptime and customized packages, Siteground does more than just a promise, they deliver too.In this day and age where time, and your website, is money people value dedicated support above anything else, and while some might say Siteground is a little more expensive than others, a lot more gladly pay it because of the exceptional customer care and support.

If you are new to the whole web hosting scene and on the lookout for a web host provider or if you are planning to change providers then it might be a case of taking the cPanel less traveled. Siteground is considered a little less mainstream which is why they are able to offer a more dedicated service as well as services and packages that are more varied and personalized.

A Few Facts about Siteground

Free Domain Name – no matter how hard you look you will be hard-pressed to find a hosting company that gives away domain names, for free. Not only does Siteground do this they also provide you with high-quality

Incredibly Fast Installation – you are able to install most of the popular apps in extra quick time with Softaculous.

Control Panel – SiteGround uses cPanel which is very user-friendly.

Extra Fees – If you decide to pay on a monthly basis Siteground will charge you a monthly hosting fee. However, if you pay for the full year up front you will end up saving yourself a bit of money.

Excellent WordPress Hosting

If you have ever tried setting up WordPress you will know there are various ways to install it and they all require a certain amount of technical know-how. Most times it is fairly stress-free but there are instances where technical problems arise with manual installations or you might have trouble getting things to work first time around. And that is where Siteground’s knowledge and expertise comes in. They make the installation and hosting, of WordPress an absolute breeze with genuine 1-click installation features.

Whether you are setting up your very first website or transferring your old site to its new home the team at Siteground will help you every step of the way. All your data and databases will be carried over, without any downtime or you having to lift a finger. We also need to mention that they have added a free website builder for all their customers.

The Advantages of Using Siteground

There are so many advantages to signing up with Siteground we couldn’t possibly mention them all and depending on the package you choose these may vary slightly too, but there a few key benefits that apply across the board with the web hosting provider which include:

Security

Siteground offers several security options to keep your site as safe as possible. These include HackAlert, a monitoring feature that lets you know if your site is under attack, antispam tools like SpamAssasin and SpamExperts, IP address blocklists and hotlink protection. They also have Leech Protect, a tool that lets administrators stop users giving out or publicly posting their passwords to portions of the site.

Siteground also integrates with CloudFlare for improved security and performance. While CloudFlare is available to any site owner you still need to know about it in order to sign up but the integration means more people (who wouldn’t ordinarily know about it) are able to benefit. There is only one other web hosting provider that offers CloudFlare accounts.

They also have a software scanning tool called SiteCheck: it checks your website to see if there is any malware on the site or in the code. It is worth running this scan every now and then because the last thing you want is your website infecting a customer’s computer.

Authentic Uptime

If you have an online business or ecommerce store you want a web host provider that guarantees excellent uptime, and delivers. If your site is down it means a loss of income, potential customers and visitors. To put it in perspective, in 2009 Amazon was down for 30 minutes. Nothing major right? Wrong! The outage cost the online store $66,240 per minute, or nearly $2 million.

Siteground also has three data centers strategically located around the world to ensure maximum performance for all their clients. There is a consistent and strong level of connectivity providing absolute reliability and an excellent uptime average. Some web hosting companies claim to have 99.9% uptime but they can’t back it up.

Unparalleled Customer Care

Have you ever tried getting help with your website with one of the major web hosting providers? We have and it wasn’t pleasant. We put them to the test, pretending to be Joe Public with limited technical knowledge. The voice on the other side of the phone was clearly irritated that we didn’t understand his geek-speak and we ended up cutting the call before we were able to sort out the problem, out of sheer frustration.

A lot of hosting companies assume that because you have purchased a package you know everything about setting up a website, and there are a few that make you feel particularly stupid. Not with Siteground. The service offers knowledgebase articles and tutorials and their customer care is available quickly and easily through a ticket-based system, live chat, and around the clock telephone support.

There are very few companies that offer the same customer care as Siteground. It is their point of difference and what sets them apart from any of the competition.

Auto-Scalability

Another advantage for Siteground clients is the auto-scalability feature, which prevents the overuse of resources, or bandwidth limit. In the cloud hosting package you can set your server to auto-scale mode – which then adjusts itself automatically if and when necessary.

Fully Managed Servers in Use

The cloud hosting package from Siteground gives you a whole lot of fully managed servers. What does it mean for you? Well, the very capable team take care of your virtual server and everything else that ensures your website stays updated and up.

Other advantages of hosting with Siteground include:

Free Let’s Encrypt SSL – Most Siteground reviews don’t mention this, however it is very important. Let’s Encrypt provides website owners secure socket layer certificates for free. There are no annual fees, no costs to renew it and you don’t have to remember when to renew it, it’s done automatically. The SSL certificates are free, they don’t need any validation emails or internet protocols to install and popular browsers trust them too.

PHP version manager – As a customer of Siteground you can choose which versions of PHP you plan to use. A lot of web hosts don’t allow you to switch PHP versions.

Automatic daily site backup – For those of you who have never backed up anything a day in your life because you forget, you need Siteground. The web hosting provider backs up your site for free every day, without you having to do a thing.

The Disadvantages

There aren’t a lot, and definitely not enough for us not to use SiteGround, but there are a few limitations. In our experience they are:

Limited Plans – there are a few limitations on shared hosting plans. For example GoGeek, their biggest shared plan, which costs $14.95 has 100,000 monthly hits limit whereas other web hosting providers have shared hosting packages that will guarantee you at least 100,000 hits or more. Their other two shared hosting plans are limited to 10 and 25,000 monthly visits respectively which can be an issue for some website owners. However, we think this limit isn’t unreasonable because a large number of websites don’t get over 100,000 monthly visits (even if they tell you otherwise).

Dated Interface – The control panel’s interface looks a little dated, which might put some users off. We don’t mind it too much because it still has all of the software and tools we need.

Expensive – when compared to other web hosting providers SiteGround is a bit more expensive than others, and their plans cost more and offer less, relatively speaking. But and this is a big but, you get incredible service and customer support, unparalleled in fact, and for a lot of people, including us, you can’t put a price on that.

So, weighing up the pros and cons SiteGround offers excellent security and customer service but it does lack a few features that their rivals have. But with all things considered they are a hosting provider that is aimed at smaller websites and for this market, their offering is very good.

They offer a 30-day money-back guarantee should you want to try them out and if you plan on moving from one host to another they have free website migration services that you can take advantage of.

Hosting Plans at Siteground

Shared Hosting

SiteGround has three data centers around the world: United States (Illinois), Europe (Amsterdam) and Asia-Pacific (Singapore), and each comes with their advantages. If you are concerned about data privacy, for example, you can use the European one; if a large portion of your users are based in Asia you can opt to use the Asia-Pacific data center or you can use the US server as a default. Although not a lot of people would actually make use this of feature it is pretty impressive to have it.

Let’s take a look at SiteGround’s various plans.

Linux-based StartUp plan

The Linux StartUp plan includes a website, 10GB of storage, unlimited emails, up to 10,000 monthly visitors, web performance support, and CloudFlare. It is intended for newbies, costs the least, offers moderate configuration and the reliability is ok. The 10GB is more than sufficient for personal websites and blogs but the fact that only one domain name is available on the StartUp plan means it isn’t suitable for anything more.

GrowBig plan

The GrowBig plan is for slightly larger sites and those who aren’t happy with what the StartUp plan has to offer. It offers an unlimited number of websites on the same account, an almost unlimited number of domains and subdomains and you can host as many websites as you like but only one domain is included for free; the other ones are paid for. This particular plan also has 20GB of storage, capacity for up to 25,000 visitors a month, unlimited emails, one year free SSL certificate, and CloudFlare support.

GoGeek plan

This is for you if your website (or blog) is a source of income. Everything is unlimited: 100,000 visitors a month, support for multiple sites, 30GB of storage, unlimited emails, CloudFlare, a free SSL certificate for a year and dedicated IP. GoGeek customers’ accounts are on better hardware with fewer accounts, which means you share better-performing hardware with fewer sites and they get a PCI assessment to ensure their site is compliant. However as is the SiteGround way only one domain is included free for one year, the rest are paid for.

SiteGround’s Cloud/VPS Hosting

SiteGround offers four preset plans but you can still customize a specific plan to suit your needs. You can decide how many CPU Cores, RAM and SSD Storage you would like, and while this isn’t only convenient it also saves you money and allows you to upscale for a little more at a little less. We’re not sure about you but it is quite a nice feeling to get not only what you want, but also not have to pay for stuff you don’t particularly need. It just feels like good value for money.

The nice thing about Cloud, and probably the best, is that you can configure it to auto scale according to set criteria. This is especially helpful if you’re running a promotion or campaign and are expecting a noticeable increase in traffic or if you just want to make sure your site is always online.

HHVM

HHVM is a technology that uses a “just-in-time” compilation which improves the speed of handling PHP scripts, making websites like Joomla, WordPress or any CMS faster, not by a little…but by a whole lot.

HHVM was developed and used by Facebook and is taking turning the hosting world upside down, in a good way. Up until now, the implementation has been limited to only a few top tier hosting companies offering it, but at exorbitant costs definitely not aimed at the regular man on the street.

WHM + cPanel

With SiteGround’s Cloud hosting plan you get WHM and cPanel: this enables you to have a separate cPanel account for all your websites, which is a huge added advantage.

It is important for us to mention that there are a few disadvantages to a fully managed Cloud, not just with SiteGround but across all web hosting providers. A lot of the WHM functionality has been disabled which means you can’t do too much with it, except create accounts, define packages, etc.

That being said, it does have an advantage or two – it means you (or anyone else on the server) won’t be able to “accidentally break” or delete something and if you do need to make a few changes the SiteGround team will happily assist but for any larger changes you will have to pay a premium.

Dedicated Hosting

Dedicated hosting is exactly that – where one entire server is dedicated to one single website. In this case, the website doesn’t have any of the usual problems like downtime, bandwidth or not being able to handle the traffic. With shared hosting you are a platform with other sites, so if there is downtime, all websites will be down, and you might not always have the necessary resources to look after your site.

Not with dedicated hosting. It is a lot more flexible and gives you more freedom than any of the other hosting plans

Siteground offers three dedicated hosting plans and we think there is something for everyone but you can take a look and decide for yourself.

Entry server is the cheapest dedicated hosting package and costs around $299 per month.

Power server has better features than the entry level and it comes in at $329 per month.

Enterprise server is the biggest and the most powerful and will cost in the region of $429 per month.

There is a large number of web hosting companies around and it is difficult to decide which the best one is but we can tell you that not many offer all that SiteGround does. Their dedicated hosting plans have excellent features at very good prices and with excellent customer support and care, and by giving you three types to choose from it means you can decide which one best suits you and your budget.

If you are currently looking for a new hosting plan or are planning to change your existing one we strongly suggest you take a look at SiteGround’s offerings, from their shared, cloud or dedicated hosting packages.

Conclusion

Since 2004 SiteGround has quickly earned a reputation for pushing boundaries, making them one of the most reliable and secure web hosting providers around. The only thing faster than their platform is their customer support response time, with the majority of tickets been replied to in under 10 minutes.

The company has seen incredible growth over the last few years and has grown from a handful of employees to over 400 staff. They successfully host more than a half million websites, and more than 60% of their clients are referred by existing ones. We were impressed with their response times and customer care, it really is second to none. They process more than 1800 tickets, handle over 1000 phone calls and 2500 live chat requests per day, and even if their prices are higher than other web hosting providers we think it’s justified given their excellent customer service.

In terms of their offerings SiteGround has services and plans that are on par, or exceed, just about every other web hosting provider. They are a feature rich service provider and they put their money where their mouth is.

As far as we’re concerned good customer care means happy clients, and we all know there is no price to happiness.

Let us know if you have had any dealings with SiteGround and what your experience has been like.

About the Author

Hey everyone! Jerry Mason is here.

Welcome to SitegroundWebHostingReviews.com.

I started this site because when I first got into the world of designing and creating websites online, I spent ages searching for all the right tools, softwares, and applications to use to create the best website.... Read more »